


Three Days and Just a Bit Brighter

by sighmonk



Category: Phandom, Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Phan, Alternate Universe - Tokyo Ghoul, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Ghoul Dan, Investigator Phil, M/M, Phan AU, Phan Angst, Phanfiction, Tokyo Ghoul AU, tokyo ghoul - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:27:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7162328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sighmonk/pseuds/sighmonk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humans are not the top of the food chain. No, that role goes to ghouls, man-eating creatures that look exactly like humans, forced to hide themselves amongst everyday people, lest they be exterminated by the CCG, or Commission of Counter Ghouls. Phil Lester is a special class investigator at the London branch of the CCG, and has been dubbed "CCG's Lion" for his decade of hard work. He lives with his boyfriend Dan Howell, but things aren't exactly how Phil thinks they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Days and Just a Bit Brighter

It was a warm summer night in the streets of London, thick with clouds of the sea’s heavy moisture that reflected bits of light from the flickering street lamps off of the small particles in the fog. The humidity grasped at a lone investigator as he walked with a tense step, the fog desperately clinging onto his jacket as if here trying to constrict the man into suffocation through the white material.

Swallowing hard, Phil pulled at the white tie around his neck, giving himself more room to breathe and allowing for even more air as he popped open the buttons on his black collared shirt. He allowed himself a breath before the uncomfortable look growing on his face showed itself again. He held on tighter to his silver briefcase, never once letting go.

Still stressed about the day’s events, the special class investigator pulled his phone from his pocket, quickly checking his texts. There was nothing.

As a special class investigator, it was Phil’s job to deal with the highest class ghouls, those usually ranking from S to SSS, though he naturally dealt with the rest on daily bases. Today he had managed to fight with five ghouls, all being put down easily except for the last one.

Almost thirty years old now, he has worked himself up from the lowest of ranks to get to the top, fighting hundreds of ghouls in a decade of work. They were dangerous creatures, ghouls were – which is why he always kept his briefcase with him, even if he was just going to a café. Ghouls could be anywhere and, even more dangerous, anyone could be the next victim. That’s what drove Phil to work his way through the ranks, making him what he was today: cold, disciplined, and lethal. He was the CCG’s Lion.

On his patrol earlier that evening, Phil had received a call from one of his squad members, alerting him to a high ranking ghoul that had been cornered at a funeral home. This ghoul had apparently been one of the CCG’s main targets for a while, though the activity surrounding his investigation was foggy – no one seemed too interested. After all, the ghoul only ate dead bodies. Among the highly ranked beasts most of the special classes were used to hunting, he was the least of their concerns.

Regardless, Phil had made it to the funeral home before long, coming up behind three of his subordinates just as a leader from another squad landed a heavy blow to the ghoul’s shoulder, blood spluttering as the arm was nearly chopped off by the woman’s quinque. The ghoul fell to the ground, holding his arm as a brief howl of pain escaped his mouth. He regained himself a moment later, only to have seemingly frozen in place.

He was an S rated ghoul of tall stature, a bright blue bikaku wrapping abound his back and midsection in cloudy extensions of the exposed organ as though it were a tail, and a shiba inu mask that carefully hid what must have been somewhat tanned skin from the investigators and anyone else who dared come near. All of this had earned the ghoul the name of Brushwood Dog.

According to Phil’s subordinates, the ghoul had fought hard before Phil’s arrival. He had nearly bitten one of the investigators, or so it was said, but there was no possible way that the special class could have believed that. After all, it seemed that the ghoul had just wanted to get away as fast as possible. (As well as the fact that the mask would have made it hard for the ghoul to bite anyone.) And the Brushwood Dog managed to do just that – but not before the CCG’s Lion had ripped a hole right through the middle of the Brushwood Dog with his quinque.

Letting out a sigh, the investigator let out a satisfied snort as he realized that he was walking through the hallway leading to his apartment, which he shared with his boyfriend. After such a long day, Phil couldn’t help but smile to himself at the thought of getting to swing open the doors, shrug off his long white overcoat, and see boyfriend’s bright smile, which would cheer him up in a moment. He could already taste the sweet dark roasted coffee that would be there, waiting for him, along with his night-owl of a boyfriend waiting on the sofa. In fact, he was already blushing, just from the thought of being able to press their lips together for a moment.

That was, however, before he went to turn the door to open the apartment.

The door handle was wet, slick with a thick liquid that seemed to bind Phil’s hand to the metal. Drawing back, Phil’s teeth clenched into a firm frown as the saw the red goo drip from his hand, staining the flood below him. It was blood.

Turning to his side, he looked back down the hall he had just walked through, only to realize that there was a thin line of the sickening material leading back all the way to the stairs. His breathing hitched.

“Dan!” he whispered hoarsely under his breath. Without a second thought, Phil tore open the door, almost vomiting the moment he stepped foot inside.

The room, usually so bright and lively, was drenched in darkness, the only light coming from the kitchen further down the hall and a lamp in the corner, which was leaning on its side. Flipping on the light switch, the room became more vivid and, along with it, so did the blood. It was splattered on the inside of the door and along some of the walls leading towards Dan’s room, pooling in little puddles along the floor. There was a distinct smell of coffee coming from the kitchen as well, but his nightly coffee was the last thing on Phil’s mind.

“Dan!” Phil shouted, throwing his briefcase onto the floor. Following the trail of blood, the investigator called the name over and over, frantically shoving the door leading to the younger man’s room open. Upon doing so, he fell to his knees.

There, his boyfriend lay halfway off of his bed, face looking towards the door. His eyes were half-lidded, and he was completely stripped, save for his boxers. Cans of black coffee lay around him and, amongst the blood that leaked from off of him, he held something tightly in his grasp. Above all, he was shrouded in darkness.

“Phil?” the seemingly-lifeless lump choked out with difficulty, having heard the man enter his room.

“Dan, oh thank god; you’re alive -” Phil cried, scooting his way along the ground to make it over to the bloodied man. But before he could lay a hand on him in order to inspect his wounds, Dan’s muscles tensed and he twisted his body, facing away from Phil. He huddled the object to his chest, wrapping tightly around it.

Phil instantly grabbed onto the younger man’s shoulder, his long fingers holding firm to Dan as the investigator hastily pulled him back around to face him. Dan resisted once again, but as he tried to twist out of Phil’s grasp, a sharp pain stabbed his abdomen, rendering him almost completely unable to resist the older man’s actions. He twisted back around, frozen as Phil took the item he had been grasping.

In a second, Phil was on his feet, stumbling backwards until his back hit the wall. There, in his hands, was a mask. No, the mask. It was a shiba inu mask, pointed ears and cutout eyeholes and all the like. It was the mask Phil had seen earlier that day.

“D-Dan…” the investigator stammered, voice catching in his throat as he realized what was happening. The mask, the excess coffee, the wounds on his boyfriend’s body – it was all too clear. “You’re a ghoul? You’re the Brushwood Dog?”

His words were accusatory, biting harshly at the man on the receiving end, who simply closed his eyes at the words he had been dreading to hear. Dan let out a harsh chuckle, holding tight to his midsection as he did so. Slowly, he opened his eyes, revealing his black sclera and red irises, which were just as red as the blood dripping from his swollen lips: his kakugan. At the same time, a light blue tail unfurled itself from the ghoul’s tailbone and wrapped carelessly along the ground, revealing the bikaku kakuja of the ghoul in question.

Dan smiled meekly up at his boyfriend, tears leaking him his eyes. “Surprise…” he muttered. “You’ve been fucking a ghoul for the last three years.”

With that sarcastic remark being said, the wounded man stood up with great effort, using the bed as his support. Not once as he approached the smaller man did Dan look away, a grim smile plastered to his face the whole time. Phil, on the other hand, clasped a hand over his mouth as he felt the bile rising in his stomach, the scent of blood and the shock of the moment making him sick.

“Don’t worry, babe. I knew you’d find me out one day,” Dan began, slowly taking the mask from Phil and, unmindful, letting it drop to the ground. The ghoul leaned his forehead against the investigator’s and, with a shaking hand, he began to trace the pattern of Phil’s CCG issued jacket.

“Commission of Counter Ghouls…” he mused darkly, letting out a sigh as he pulled his head back to look into the bright blue eyes of the horrified man standing before him. “You’re strong, you know. I didn’t expect anything less from CCG’s Lion! Though, I wish you had just let me flee…” His chuckle was nervous.

Phil swallowed hard. Looking up, he gazed right into the blazing eyes of the man before him. For three years, he had seen the other side of these eyes – those warm brown irises that he would find staring at him as they woke up in the morning, so full of love that even looking at them was enough to make the older of the two blush like a love-struck student. But now, he was looking at the side that was the thing he was paid to kill, to exterminate. The eyes of a ghoul… the eyes of a killer.

“I can’t believe this…” Phil muttered, refusing to meet Dan’s gaze.

Silent, Dan raised his head and took a step back, eyebrows knitted into an anxious furrow. He felt the pain in his abdomen stab him once again, and as he toppled over, blood erupted from his mouth and onto the floor, over a can of coffee along with Phil’s shoes. He looked up, eyes searching for something – anything – to stop his agony.

“Please, Phil…” he begged, though he didn’t know what he was begging for. A sob shook him. Then another. And another. “Please, make this stop…”

 _This_ , of course, referred to many things. It was the pain that was now toying with him in a physical sense, how he couldn’t regenerate as he normally would have been able to. After all, he hadn’t eaten in a few weeks, living off of only coffee and vomiting up the food Phil gave him on a regular basis. It was sweet, how his other half had cared for him so kindly with chocolates on random occasions, and it wasn’t his fault that his ghoul of a boyfriend thought that the caramel insides tasted like the leaky dung of a capybara sick with salmonella.

It meant other things as well. The emotional pain, mainly. Dan had known that this day would eventually come – it was inevitable, a ghoul living with someone who exterminates ghouls – but he hadn’t wanted to accept it. He _couldn’t_ make himself accept it. He had fallen too deep in love too quickly.

“Phil…” the ghoul cried again, voice straining as he repeated the man’s name over and over. “Phil, Phil, Phil, oh god – _Phil!_ ”

Through this, his blood-covered hands gripped at the investigator’s black pants, grasping tightly as sounds of pain were released from his lips. He looked up to Phil, whose eyes were wide, bright as they had ever been, tears welling in the corner. He took a step to the side as the wounded man called his name again, this time a twist of something more animalistic in his voice. Saliva dripped from his mouth.

“I-I can’t…” Phil muttered again.

The investigator took another step back and to the side, heading towards the door. His briefcase, he remembered, was at the entrance of their apartment. That had been a mistake.

Desperate, Phil shook off Dan as best he could, making a break towards the front of the apartment.

“Phil!” the ghoul growled, kakuja twitching as he made a break for his boyfriend as he left the room, arms flailing wildly.

Easily, the special class investigator out-maneuvered these unfocused attacks, taking advantage of the ghoul’s wounded state. He rounded the corner and sprinted past the kitchen, a million thoughts spinning through his head. _‘How could I have not noticed Dan was a ghoul?’_ was the main one, followed closely by, _‘Dammit, what am I supposed to do?’_

As he thought this, and just as he was about to reach his briefcase, Phil felt something warm grasp at his ankle, tripping him as he tried to take another step forward. He fell hard onto his face, glasses shattering as they hit the rim of the silver handle that held the investigator’s quinque. He grunted in pain, trying to wipe some of the glass from around his eyes before looking up to see Dan on top of him.

Only, this wasn’t Dan.

It was a different side of him, a side that Phil had never thought he’d see. The ghoul’s black eyes twitched in excitement, grin threatening to rip his who face open. Two strong arms held down either of the investigator’s, and the bloodied man straddled the older of the two while locking his legs, making it impossible for the black-haired man to flee.

“Look what we have here,” Dan mused, one of his fingers tracing the outline of Phil’s jaw, blue kakuja swishing excitedly from side to side. “So soft… I’m so hungry…”

Without another word, the ghoul began undoing the white jacket around Phil’s waist, pulling it back from his shoulders before he ripped the investigator’s black shirt entirely, revealing his elder’s pale skin, areas of which were still bruised from some of their escapades.

“Fuck, I’m so glad you came in when you did! I would have died were it not for you!” the ghoul screeched in a wild tone, diving forward to latch onto the purple-coloured skin between his victim’s neck and left shoulder.

Phil let out a cry of agony, hands clawing at the ghoul’s face and legs kicking wildly in an attempt to get away. Despite the bucking of his hips, he couldn’t shake himself free, being held down tightly by the younger of the two’s incredible strength. Teeth – dull as a human’s – bore into his flesh, carving out a huge chunk of his flesh as Dan pulled back, the snapping of muscles and tendons and veins sending sparks of agony rushing through his body and flooding him with panic. The investigator cried out again, feeling part of him missing as the pain shot to his brain and back in an instant, blood from the open wound splattering onto his face.

When he looked up, he barely saw anything, his vision was so blurry from the adrenaline being pumped through his veins, constricting his muscles and obscuring his vision. He heard it clearly, though: the way Dan swallowed his flesh and made an audible gasp of relief after doing do. Phil felt more of his own blood fall onto his face as the ghoul leaned back over him, smiling insanely wide.

“That’s the best I’ve tasted in so long!” Dan mused, licking at the blood on his boyfriend’s face. “Who would have expected CCG’s Lion to be so yummy? Oh man, dead bodies just don’t taste as good as the live thi-”

Before the ghoul could say anything else, however, he was shocked to see a blazing flash of red light, followed by a brief apology, then darkness.

 

 

Phil had never really liked how dark Dan kept his room. It had been too cramped, too suffocating. Even before they had become a couple, Phil would occasionally nag Dan about opening the windows up a bit or even just turning on the light, stating numerous reports about how light improved a person’s mood and health. Dan would always argue back that if Phil spent too much time in the sun, he would be sunburned in a matter of minutes. Of course, they both knew that it was the elder’s want to try and lighten up the place, especially after working so much on dark topics.

Now, the lights were on, curtains pulled back, and window open, allowing the one day of good weather in London to seep into the room. It was bright, not a cloud in the sky, and rather cool for a summer day; much better than it had been a few days ago. In the room, the investigator sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. A book was in his hand, _Metamorphosis_ by Franz Kafka. He hadn’t read it in a long time (not since he was a teenager), but it seemed like the time to revisit his old favourite. Even through the disturbing parts of it, the book relaxed him, especially at a time like this.

As he heard the bed creak, Phil closed his book, not caring about marking his place, and stood, straightening his blue button-up and adjusting his glasses as he did so. His gaze fell down to the monotone checkered pattern of the bedspread, where a tossing Dan lay underneath.

Phil smiled gently, placing his right hand on Dan’s shoulder, shaking him gently.

“Wake up, Danny,” he mused.

“I thought I’ve told you not to call me that,” replied the man beneath him, who sat up with an uneasy balance before letting out a huge yawn. Rubbing his eyes, he looked dreamily at Phil, caramel irises meeting blue. A smile plastered his face, and he turned to look at the clock. “What time is it?”

“About three,” Phil replied, taking a seat next to Dan, who shuffled over a bit to make room. The younger of the two lay his head on the investigator’s chest before intertwining their fingers, playing with Phil’s hand before bringing it up to his mouth and kissing the knuckles.

“I had the weirdest dream,” Dan said, closing his eyes as he snuggled deeper into Phil’s grasp.

“What about?” Phil asked.

“I’m not really sure,” Dan muttered, something catching in the back of his throat. He tried his best to push it back down, though, his voice breaking a bit. “I think I was a ghoul, and you found out. That would really be something, huh, Mr. Investigator?”

Phil stayed silent, only tightening his grip on Dan’s hand.

After a moment of solid silence, Dan was the one to break the awkwardness, sitting up to look Phil in the eye. The latter of the two looked away uncomfortably, biting at his lips.

“What happened?” Dan asked, voice cautious.

“Do you not remember?” the investigator asked. He looked at Dan now, eyebrows knitted in a kind of sadness.

“Not after you found… f-found my mask.” He swallowed hard, balling the duvet into fists. He choked out a small sob, but forced himself not to let his tears be shown. “I feel like I did something really bad. Really, _really_ bad."

“Why do you think that?” Phil asked.

“Look at my stomach,” Dan muttered, stating the obvious and gesturing to his bare skin. The area that had been so bloody before was closed, not a single mark in sight. “I was dying, Phil. I couldn’t have recovered from that with nothing.”

“It’s simple… I took you to the hospital-”

“Phil…”

“And they sewed you right up-”

"Phil."

“And I took you home and-”

“Phil!” Dan cried, grabbing onto the investigator’s shoulders, shaking him slightly. The black-haired man winced a little, teeth clenched in pain as he grasped Dan’s arm with his right hand, moving it from the wounded area.

“P-Phil… what did I do?”

Rather than answering, Phil looked away again, fists uneasily grasping at the bed. Dan took this as an opportunity to reach forward, unbuttoning halfway down of his boyfriend’s shirt with trembling fingers. Upon doing this, he pulled the left side of the shirt down, revealing a large chunk of gauze sealed with layers of medical tape, holding the absorbent white material over the bite wound.

Dan pulled back, his stomach sick at the sight. “Oh my god…” he whispered, covering his mouth with both of his hands. Before he could stop himself, tears were leaking from his clenched eyes, sobs rocking his somewhat-tanned body as he leaned on Phil’s shoulder. He felt disgusted with himself.

“I’m so sorry,” he cried between sobs, grasping onto the blue shirt of the man beside him.

“It’s alright, Dan,” Phil shushed, buttoning up his shirt again before pulling Dan onto his lap. 

Back in the day when Dan had just moved in, he was so small and so frail that the investigator was afraid that he would never reach above 5’8”. Phil had sworn that the barely-adult had been terrified of him, though Dan claimed later on that he just had a huge crush on him. Two years later, when they started dating, the ghoul would curl up in the older of the two’s lap, wrapping thin but growing arms around Phil’s neck as they would watch movies, making stupid jokes to one another. Now, three years since then, Dan overshadowed Phil’s height by a good inch or so, being thicker and more well-built as well. But that didn’t stop the investigator from trying to hold him like they used to, though now it was only Dan’s upper body that could fit on him.

“It’s not fucking alright,” the ghoul sobbed, looking over to Phil as he pulled back. “I hurt you. But I know that’s not all.”

“What?” Phil questioned.

“You know just as well as I do how we… how ghouls’ bodies work.” Once again, his voice was dark.

“Yeah, I-I know.”

“Then how am I healed? How… how am I alive?”

Phil sat quiet for a moment, his teeth clenched so hard that Dan heard it as they slipped past one another. The investigator took a breath before bringing a hand to the sobbing man’s face, wiping away tears with his thumb.

“We do crazy things for the ones we love,” Phil muttered softly, a smile showing itself on his face. He cast a glance to the small brown package on the bedside table, and from that distance, the ghoul could smell what it was clearly: the smell of meat with a layer of dirt being traceable on it.

Dan gasped again. “Are you insane?”

Phil chuckled, blue eyes shining. “I’ve been a ghoul investigator, a special class agent, CCG’s Lion for over a decade of my life. I’ve been living with my boyfriend for more than five years, and I just found out that I’ve been having sex with a ghoul for three of those years. I had a bite taken out of me by him, and yet I still dug up a dead body so that he could eat it and live.” He laughed again, anxiety laced in with an obvious tone. “So yeah, I’m pretty out there.”

“That’s not a laughing matter, Phil,” the ghoul pouted.

“I know, it’s not,” the investigator agreed. He took another uneasy breath. “So, um… can I see your kakugan again?” he asked, his voice soft.

Pausing for a second, Dan did as he was asked, blinking before revealing his ghoulish eyes again.

“Wow…” Phil muttered, somewhat mesmerized. “Does everything look the same like that?”

“What, do they not teach you at the academy?” Dan chuckled, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.

“No, they don’t,” the older of the two said matter-of-factly. “And I’ve never spoken to a ghoul before… o-other than you, of course.”

With that uncomfortable tumble of words, Dan’s eyes reverted back to their brown version, eyebrows knitted in anxiety. Phil looked equally as awkward, looking at his hands.

“How are we going to make this work?” the ghoul questioned, his voice nearly a whisper.

Phil swallowed hard before taking Dan’s hand in his own. “I don’t know, but we’re going to.”

“An S-rated ghoul and the CCG’s Lion: the unlikely couple,” he snorted, rolling his brown eyes. “That’s not going to be difficult at all… speaking of which, why aren’t you at work right now?”

“I told them that you were sick and needed to watch after you. It’s been three days, but they gave me a week off,” Phil said softly, planting a kiss to his boyfriend’s temple. "Being a special class gives you certain perks."

“Oh,” was his response.

“Look,” Phil began, looking directly into the ghoul’s human-masked eyes. “I don’t know how this is going to work. I’m an investigator, and I love my work. I’m not going to quit. I-I can’t. Too many ghouls hurt too many people.

Dan cringed at this, but Phil continued:

“I know you aren’t that way. No one at the CCG really cares about hunting for the Brushwood Dog – he’s a grave robber, not anyone’s concern. There are rumors that he’s cannibalized some other ghouls in desperation, but that still doesn’t warrant the full attention, or even minor attention, of the CCG,” the investigator said, smiling meekly at the shaking man in front of him.

“And little do they know, the Brushwood Dog is one of the sweetest, most loving ghouls in the world – ”

“Who just so happens to have devoured part of your trapezius."

“ – who just so happened to have been starving and dying after his unknowing boyfriend sliced a hole through his diaphragm. But, whatever it takes…” Phil paused for a moment, taking a breath. “Whatever it takes for us to work, I want it to. I love you more than anything in the world, Dan, and I’ll do anything to keep you here with me.”

Dan blushed heavily at this, smiling before he hid his face in the small of Phil’s neck. “You idiot,” he muttered, crying a bit. “Stop being so gushy. It’s embarrassing.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Phil cooed, patting Dan’s curly hair with a gentle touch. He moved slowly, gently standing up off of the bed and pulling Dan towards him. “Want to go make some coffee?”

“You cannot make coffee to save your life,” the ghoul mused sarcastically, standing up on wobbly legs as his boyfriend helped him. “I’ll make it, you watch."

“Yes sir, Mr. Brushwood Dog.”

Dan frowned, pulling on a random pair of pajama pants from his drawer. “Don’t call me that.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Phil pouted, smiling awkwardly. “But you call me CCG’s Lion.”

“Because you’re the king of the bed,” Dan said cheekily, pressing a kiss to Phil’s lips, making him blush. “Now come on, I’m thirsty."

“Alright, alright,” Phil muttered in defeat, hands covering his flushed face as he followed Dan out into the blood-free lounge before heading to the kitchen.

“Also,” Dan said, voice full of amusement. “Most everything stays the same when my kakugan are activated… but things are just a bit brighter when they aren’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading; I've had this AU in my head for almost six months and I just got around to writing it. Now if you'd all excuse me, I'm going to get myself another mug of instant coffee.


End file.
